With Recep Erdogan at the helm, Turkey’s AK Party has wielded power for over a decade. Its “Turkish model” of religiously tamed capitalism achieved high rates of economic growth and was widely celebrated. But now it appears to be losing its luster. The Gezi Park uprising was followed by a series of corruption scandals. The AKP has done its part to destabilize regional geopolitics, and domestic political repression has become the order of the day. Meanwhile, a new crackdown on the Kurds has begun. Whither the Turkish model today?

Aslı Bâli directs the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Cihan Tuğal is author of The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism (2016)